Thousands of Tonga residents face a long wait for power and other services to be restored after a cyclone tore through the Pacific nation this week. More details emerged Wednesday about the damage caused by Cyclone Gita after it hit the main island Monday night just south of the capital, Nuku'alofa. The cyclone destroyed homes, churches and even the nation's historic Parliament House.

New Zealand's opposition leader Bill English said Tuesday he would leave Parliament after losing last year's election. The former prime minister told reporters he was resigning as leader of the conservative National Party and leaving Parliament later this month.

The people of Tonga are coming to terms with the devastation left by Tropical Cyclone Gita overnight. Winds of over 233km/h ripped roofs off houses, brought down trees, destroyed a Catholic church, Radio New Zealand reports. Tonga’s emergency services say they are struggling to get out and assess the damage after Tropical Cyclone Gita left a trail of destruction overnight.

A Samoan woman flew 31 of her friends and relatives for an extravagant wedding in Samoa, paid for by monies she siphoned from two of her former employees. Christine Tupu, 26, pleaded guilty last year to stealing A$341,000 ($647,000) from her employers Electrolux and Toll, by telling people the bank account details for payment had changed and giving them her and her husband’s personal account details.

New Zealand's prime minister announced on Friday that she is expecting her first child in June. Jacinda Ardern, 37, took office in October. Speculation swirled around whether she would start a family soon when she took over the leadership of her then opposition Labour Party last year.

The New Zealand Police has come under fire and have been found to have "violated tradition" when they featured a non-Sikh officer in a badly-wrapped turban in a popular recruitment video, a Sikh community leader says.

The driver of an SUV that rammed into a crowd in central Melbourne on Thursday, injuring 19 people, is an Australian citizen of Afghan descent with a history of drug use and mental illness but no known links to terrorism, police said.

New Zealand’s Minister for Pacific Peoples, Associate Minister of Courts and Associate Minister of Justice, Aupito William Sio, will be the guest of honour of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today as the Church launches this year’s “Light the World” Christmas initiative in the South Pacific.

Papua New Guinea authorities said Friday they had relocated the last asylum seekers who had refused for three weeks to leave a closed immigration camp for fear they would face violence in the alternative accommodations.

He might have been the charming and funny one half of the popular Laughing Samoans but at home between Ete and his wife Mele Wendt, he wasn’t that funny. Especially when it came to the issue of domestic violence.

Church Ministers who say the government’s move to explain the ramifications of new tax law governing their income is late have a message for Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi’s administration.

Pacific islands are sinking as a result of climate change and they need help. That’s the message from Fiji’s Prime Minister and the President of the 23rd meeting of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C. C.O.P.23), Frank Bainimarama, to world leaders in Bonn, Germany, this week.